Geographical Largess

The drive from our national forest haven to Mather Campground on the South Rim was long. It felt like we were climbing a slow, gentle mountain. The trees seemed to shrink the closer we got. All the while I felt a tightness in my chest, anticipating what this enormous hole in the earth would feel like when I saw it. This would be my second time, technically, to the Grand Canyon, though I was a mere 1 year when my parents and I visited last.

On the advice of our new friend George, we stopped a few miles from the park entrance in Tusayan, with everyone else and their tour bus, to see the Imax film that would help us with our depth perception upon seeing the real thing. The theater was packed, as were all other spaces where people might tend to congregate: the gift shop, the bathroom, the parking lot, the front desk, the sidewalks. The film had magnificent footage, mostly depicting sequential exploratory rafting expeditions down the Colorado. The history of the European contact with the canyon was presented by a sultry male voice, which proclaimed that little is known about the people who lived in and around the canyon prior to the 1600s when the first Spanish conquistadors set eyes on the gaping 10 miles of space from South to North rim. As the history lesson proceeded, the horrendous cliches increased to a constant serenade. I began to sink lower in my chair. Adam and I exchanged glances and rolled our eyes. We tried to focus on the visuals and ignore the incredibly sappy voice over that reminded us why we groaned at movies in High School History class.

The campground was hidden from the rim by pines and juniper. We had a whole 3 days before we would head East to meet the Santa Barbara Middle School on their end of the year bike trip to the 4 corners, so we were anxious to get set up and do a real test of working/writing/living in this home on wheels. Adam got the dish pointed in record time. We planned out the following day for the first time since we'd started, allowing several hours to explore around the canyon rim. Near dusk, we extracted the bikes from the trailer (also the first time on our trip) and got them pumped up for a ride to the rim.

Excitement mounted as we looked at the visitor map and headed off in the direction we thought would take us to the Mather lookout. It turns out that the Grand Canyon Park staff much prefer that you take a shuttle to view the wonders than walk or bike or otherwise try to navigate through the forest to the edge of the precipice. The signs were sparse. After starting to head back to the highway, we turned around and found the lookout. The first glimpse sent a small wave to shore in my belly. And then, it was just there: miles of empty space framed by colorful crags of rock.

In the days that followed, with more lookouts, we realized the rim can only be seen so many times before our eyes just glaze over and we can't fathom what we're seeing. With only a few days to spend there and my tenuous knee strength, we did not venture into the canyon. If we return, I know we will venture down into the chasm, hopefully Havasu Canyon.

We learned that while popular campgrounds are certainly livable and afford some luxuries like running water and not having to dig a daily hole, they present the likelihood of unsavory neighbors. Ours, for the duration of our stay, were on three sides: two friendly groups we enjoyed chatting, watching mellow elk, and eating smores with, and one family whose mother or grandmother (we couldn't tell which) could be heard at all hours chastizing her hubby and two young charges in a voice I though was only fit for a wicked stepmother in a fairy tale. It was incredible, the things that came out of her mouth:

"If you want our help you're going to have to use your brain. I'm not going to tell you how to do it! Any third, fourth or fifth grader would know how to do that. Just figure it out and stop bugging me!"

"Come here and look at this. What's wrong with this picture?! You left this out for the birds to crap all over it!"

We thought up what me might say to her, and concluded that nothing we could say would do anything but create more animosity. Amazingly, the kids seemed as cheerful as could be. They played until they were yelled at, then went back to playing with the cat (on a leash) and dog, both of whom seemed the woman's favorites in the family.

Across the street of our camp loop, we met a brother, sister and their friend from Albuquerque and Kansas City. It was great to connect with people out of the blue. So far we had met friends of friends, but had not made any friends or acquaintances on the sole circumstance of being on the road. We attempted to make jiffy pop over their campfire and managed to get half of it popped, and unburned. Yum. They shared their smores and trail mix with us. We swapped trip stories and travel recommendations and discussed racial profiling at length.

On the other side of our camp, we met a family from Minnesota who had moved to a town near Tucson but were headed back to their home state, saying it was not conservative enough in their new surroundings. They apologized several times for bothering us but with our encouragement finally came over as a group to chat. Actually, the elk who skirted our campsites were the catalyst. The mother in the family was quite concerned about the 4-legged creatures, wondering if they would trample their tent in the night. We did our best to reassure her this was highly unlikely. They stayed till it grew dark, and began saying they'd better leave us alone. After another several minutes of inching further toward their campsite, I realized with a grin: this is a long Minnesota goodbye.